From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sun Nov 07 1999 - 10:20:24 MST
I cited Arthur C. Clarke's 1959 story `Out of the Cradle, Endlessly
Orbiting', reprinted in the collection, TALES OF TEN WORLDS, 1963:
`...famous remark of Tsiolkovsky's, which I'd hung up for everyone to see
as they entered my office:
EARTH IS THE CRADLE OF THE MIND--BUT
YOU CANNOT LIVE IN THE CRADLE FOREVER
Perhaps I should have spelled out a rather obvious play in Clarke's title
(obvious, at any rate, to Americans, although maybe not to the rest of us):
it's a reference to Walt Whitman's poem `Out of the Cradle Endlessly
Rocking' (in LEAVES OF GRASS, 1881 edition), which opens with that line.
Its second line, eerily predictive in its own way, perhaps, is `Out of the
mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle'.
Damien Broderick
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:05:43 MST